idk, the internet from like 1994-2006 was “social networks constructed of people who like each other and share some affinity” and it was p fun, then the internet from 2006-2024 has been “social networks full of everybody, engagement driven by people being awful to each other” and it’s sucked ass
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The switch to Surveillance Capitalism (spying in everything) and Monopoly/Lock-in.
The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory dates back to March of 2004!
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies#
And then the not-previously-internet-savvy old people showed up right alongside the bots and the Russian propaganda machine and everything went to hell.
Social media are inherently misogynistic adolescent incel compulsions
That's fine. If communities can only grow to a certain size before they are unwieldy to manage, I'm fine with that.
We are using an internet engineered by misanthropes with contempt for humanity.
yeesh.
see a cure for. It's why I haaate substack. Like, dudes: MAKE YOUR OWN SITE. It's cheap & easy.
Like the difference between a town square and that one bar where all the cool people hang out.
still, it WAS more fun.
at least, more fun than Xitter, which was about as fun as a root canal when I left & that was BEFORE Leon.
used real names on at least two or three of 'em. It did NOT make us more "civil," but at least when you were called an "irredeemable fuckwit," you knew they really cared, at least a little bit.
https://nostr.com/
which also meant manual moderation could keep up, either from moderators or members of the community telling unruly newcomers "simmer down, that's not how we roll"
I think it's more of a consequence of text conversation, than a modern evil.
Social networking doomed the Internet, no questions.
As soon as everyone on the globe had a global stage, it was Gane Over.
And the MUCKs, and the MOOs, and the MPORGS.
Millennium kids reading this and going, "WTF IS HE ON?!" 😅
And that's how it should be!
Here is a great explanation of what has happened with the internet, our brains and how it spills out to wider society. The conclusion reached is that we should return to the days of bulletin boards, forums and blogs, with smaller communities that share something in common.
2006-2014
2014-2024
You can go back to older posts on other sites and you'll clearly see the difference
Was #1.2 m in fall, moved last week with much more going on here. Not dealing with waves of ugliness on every issue is a blessing. Graçias 🦋.
Bring back BBS and ICQ
If you can't handle a chat client in a terminal you can't have social media.
I don't make the rules *shurgs*
we put CARE and PERSONAL CRAFT into those flames.
Mostly I think: size matters.
Blue Sky is by far the biggest platform I've been on that's had (relatively) this little wank.
It's just too fucking huge.
I'm getting a lot of the same vibes here!
Also, I have been reminded of MetaFilter a lot, for some reason
The realness of oppening Bluesky and feeling like everybody here is equally accessible
It’s about the exchange, not the people
As soon as all the weird discourse about couches and charcuterie happened and I couldn't even vaguepost without getting jumped I was done.
Also trans. Very done
What's the name of that principle or whatnot where you can only ever really "know" a max of 150 discrete other individuals? I think about that a lot these days.
Gotta say, my own decision not to bother with FB, Twitter, or similar seems to have been a surprisingly good decision in hindsight. Isolating, but a good idea nonetheless.
Deeply personal internet forum hate was it's own special kind of hate
Be too much of an asshole, you got booted and a rep.
And each of them being much smaller meant that moderators had an easier time manually dealing with everything.
That is incorrect!
We did not like each other, we just shared some affinity.
Ah goddangit
Someone I knew in an AOL writer’s group in 1994, sent someone to my house to threaten me, in person, in 2023.
It really is personal.
I don’t recall anything like that happening on ICQ
That said, I've considered building a new social media system based on a hardened version of the Usenet transport layer.
"Why does everyone keep saying the hate Bakugo" in a group literally callED 'We Hate That Bitch Bakugo in MHA'